Day 16: a walk in the woods

If I find myself getting particularly snappish or shrewish or off-centre it’s almost always one of three things:

1. Not enough sleep
2. Forgot to eat
3. Haven’t been exercising

And to this list I am tempted to add a fourth item; Haven’t been touching enough grass. And perhaps a fifth: Haven’t seen friends enough.

Well, today I managed to fix all five. Charlotte finally gave us a sleep worthy of the name, and then I went for a hike with some mates.

I am deeply suspicious of the traditional introvert/extrovert continuum; while I know there are people who trend more in one direction or another, we all want to see some people sometimes and other people no times, and there’s a lot of in-between. So I put the increasingly scary lawns to one side and all the work stuff I might conceivably do on a Sunday and walked up a bush-clad hill and down again with a couple of good friends.

I’ve had plenty of hikes where deep and meaningfuls are exchanged but this was not one of those occasions. From the moment we arrived in the carpark we were each a more or less continuous fountain of bullshit. Unmitigated, unadulterated shit-talking; there were bants and witticisms and non-sequiturs and Your Mum jokes. It was all the stuff that you can’t really exercise around the family unless you are a particular kind of dad (bad). No-one hiked near us; people got wind of the sheer malarkey in the air and stayed well clear. It was a mediocre day for it; low cloud put an end to majestic views, and we got drizzled on. None of us cared.

Coming back in the car I felt cleansed, despite being liberally smeared with trail-clay. Sometimes you just need to get some shit out of your system, and sometimes you just need to see your mates, and sometimes it’s both. Yes, this meant the lawns didn’t get mowed. Well… too bad, lawns. You’ll wait another day.

Of course once the kids were in bed I was straight back to work. The business isn’t going to start itself, as much as I might wish it would. And now I’ve done what work I could in the little evening interregnum and now I suppose I might actually try for another early-ish night myself, kick off some kind of virtuous cycle.

And if you too have felt a bit scratchy lately I really can recommend an honest grass-touching session, combined with a bit of hearty intra-friend bullshitting as needed. It’s good for what ails you.